This rich and inspiring collection of papers originates from the COWAP "Sexuality and Gender" conference that took place in Sweden in 2002. A conference so rich in ideas calls for documentation, and it became necessary to collect and publish the (reworked) contributions in the form of this book. The conference was created with the conscious intent of bringing different ideas to bear on each other, in order to promote further research into this area that is so vital.

This volume is an exploration of contemporary theories on femininity, encompassing such issues as sexuality, gender, masculinity and femininity, providing a dialogue from some of the world’s leading analysts in this field. With contributors such as Jessica Benjamin, Nancy Chodorow, Julia Kristeva, and Juliet Mitchell, there was never any doubt that the difficult questions of sexuality and gender would be analysed and discussed in new and stimulating ways. In this volume, old concepts are dismantled and new ideas brought forward. The contributions demonstrate the diversity and development currently moving the studies on femininity forward to a new understanding. --- from the publisher

"There are more questions than answers in this book; questions that are important and will continue to intrigue us. This book will be needed to remind us of the different opinions and help us create tomorrow’s theories. Human experience cannot be reduced to sexuality, but there is sexuality in everything human." -- From the Introduction by Iréne Matthis

Irene Matthis is Professor of Psychoanalysis and Assistant Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at Umeå University in Sweden. She is a training analyst and teacher at the Swedish Psychoanalytic Institute (IPA) and the Scandinavia Co-ordinator for IPA--COWAP. She is a Board Member of the International Neuro-Psychoanalysis Society and editor of the Bulletin Section of the international journal Neuro-Psychoanalysis. She is the author of several books and papers, including, in Swedish: Det omedvetnas arkeologi, [The Archeology of the Unconscious], Natur och Kultur, 1992; Den tänkande kroppen, [The Thinking Body] Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1997; and, in English: On Freud’s Couch, (Matthis, I. & Szecsödy, I. (eds.), New York: Aronson, 1998; Sketch for a Metapsychology of Affects, In: Int. Journal of Psychoanalysis, no. 81:2. 2000; Finger–twisting and Cracked Voices: The Hysterical Symptom Revisited, In: Scharff, D.E. (ed.), The Psychoanalytic Century: Freud’s Legacy for the Future, New York: Other Press; Strangebody, In: The Embodied Female, Alizade, M. (ed.), London & New York: Karnac, 2002.